In a world of streamers at war, each trying to make the masses stop on their siren rocks, the battleground for Spotify to raise the stakes is too lucrative to miss. With Spotify HiFi set to launch this year, the digital music stream is about to find its Scala, with Spotify set to convert the streaming revolution from Bluray to Atmos. And all of a sudden, the script could have changed. If nothing else, the mere whisper of Spotify’s new-found imprimatur for sound quality affirm that this is the moment that streaming finally gets serious. But what, exactly, is it about Spotify HiFi that has listeners’ ears pricking up? Let’s find out.
Cue Spotify’s ‘Stream On’ extravaganza, in which the company blew back the curtain on an offering that had long been murmured about in the hushed tones of internet bulletin boards and dinner parties alike: Spotify HiFi, a new tier of music that would bring CD-quality sound to subscribers who had been served with the platform’s current MPEG blueprint, which, while laudable, certainly hadn’t been singing to those with sensitive ears.
Currently scheduled for launch in select markets later this year, details about Spotify HiFi remain as fuzzy as an improvisation by a master. Vague pricing and specific availability only add to the anticipation. But what has us so excited about this emergent streaming upgrade is the promise of lossless audio. That phrase alone tells us that the sound quality we’ll experience promises to be a giant leap from Spotify’s maximum bitrate of 320 kbps, or, as lossless has it, from compressed digital speckles and artifacts to a sound that allows every nuance to breathe and be heard the way the artist intended.
Though Spotify’s melody of progress sounds sweet for them, it’s also important to remember the larger musical landscape of competition: other streaming services – Tidal and Deezer – have already gotten on the high-fidelity bandwagon, and APPLE MUSIC’s latest move – providing lossless audio at no extra cost – is yet another sign that a new trend of placing the listener at the forefront is re-emerging. Spotify HiFi is not just a new innovation, then, but a welcome sign that the music industry is still keeping the tempo in an ever-changing story of music that.
But apart from the hi-fi revelations, Spotify’s Stream On presentation was a demonstration of how to harness creativity and user-expanding innovation. An ‘Discography’ feature lets you see an artist’s entire body of work in a single unified view, a godsend for avid completist listeners. An ‘Friends Mix’ feature creates a playlist with music from your friends’ listening habits – ends up becoming a shared experience.
At the very least, Spotify Hifi’s commitment to lossless audio indicates that you can trust that you’re getting your music back in an audio format that preserves every last bit of its studio-quality essence. For those who like both to get lost in the music and break it down, dissecting each electro-acoustic track as it was first laid down, high-hi fidelity audio becomes your gateway to audiophile nirvana – every beat, every chord, every melody, every last nuance pure and intact.
The fact that Spotify wants you to hear those sounds clearly is a good sign for the future of music. But Spotify’s attempts to introduce volume-levelling as a feature – testament to its commitment to fostering a better listening experience – also show how it seems ready to embrace future technologies, including lossless audio, in ways that other services aren’t. By mastering the art of reproduction, Spotify is helping to usher in the next golden age of sound.
As such, Spotify HiFi represents a key milestone in the growing maturation of music listening. By taking their first steps into streaming CD-quality audio, Spotify potentially reasserts themselves as a curator and protector of fidelity, ensuring that each nuanced harmonic and thunderous climax is as pure and clear as an apple of the ear. On Spotify HiFi, the future of music listening is less about hearing more and more about listening better – about hearing music within all its dimensions, in its truest form.
But who among us can fail to salivate over the prospect of this sonic sub-atomic monolith and not imagine that, in its wake, music might assume its rightful place not merely as the soundtrack to our lives, but rather as their very substance; a Spotify world in which every track is a song, every playlist a symphony, and every listener a maestro of the infinite harmonies of pure sound? And what better appetiser for the music business to serve up than Spotify’s own rush towards high-fidelity, the honeyed little morsel that the future of music streaming so richly deserves?
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